Cork home for €320,000 is a cinema lover's paradise

Semi-d includes a purpose-built screening room in a ground floor extension

Carrigtwohill, Cork
€320,000
Size	130 sq m (1,400 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3 + attic
Bathrooms	3
BER	B3

CINEMA lovers are pretty well catered for venues once you leave the 13-screen Mahon Point Omniplex behind and head east via Cork’s Jack Lynch Tunnel.

There’s the Gate Cinema in Midleton; the resuscitated and retro-style Regal Cinema in Youghal, and the screening options too of the East Cork Cinema Club.

But, there’s a new kid on the block, it’s at Maple Lane, and it has all of the comforts of home. In fact, it is a home and an excellently finished one.

One of the more unusual features of the finely-presented, and fully utilized and colonised No 1 Maple Lane, Castlelake in East Cork’s Carrigtwohill is the property’s home entertainment and screening room, in a purpose-built ground floor extension which brings this 2006-built three-bed semi-d up to an impressive 130 sq m, or c 1,400 sq ft.

It’s got the Wow factor, says an impressed selling agent James Colbert who says that even apart from the impressive tech there’s a lot to impress in how No 1’s owners made it a super-practical and distinctive family home.

First up, Mr Colbert says, they have eked out storage in so many places, some expected, others entirely unexpected.

They’ve cleverly created accessible understairs storage, but that’s not entirely uncommon now. What is uncommon is the use the ‘above stairs’ space, the vertical wall over the steps, has been put to: it’s been adapted to hold a roof-box for a car, a sort of meta-storage solution of how do you store something to designed to hold ‘stuff’ on a car, but itself is a space gobbler? Mount it vertically on a wall above the stairs, that’s what.

Home makes cleve use of storage space.

It will be coming down of the wall soon enough in any case now, getting all packed up with family belongings for the longer haul, as No 1 goes to market for its young family of owners and occupants who’ve been here from day one, working in tech, but who are now returning to their native Poland.

The Price Register shows the sale of No 1 Maple Lane in the large Castlelake Carrigtwohill scheme in 2014 at €160,000 (the vendors had been part of a rental-purchase scheme from 2007), and since then they have added to their site size, getting more ground to the side, and colonising all of that as well, so now there’s a side garden, with astroturf, and a small lawned back garden and separate sit-out spot/play area.

Inside, the kitchen’s to the front of the home, left of the entry hall and its double-door storage space, and off is a dining area, sort of mid-ships with side garden access, leading to a living room overlooking the back garden.

Off at an angle to the side/back is the wired for everything media room, with 5.1 HD cinema room with overhead projector and 121 inch screen. HDMI cabling in the ceiling allows for top images and sound, and the room has blackout blinds, and underfloor heating to boot.

“This extension is the main bill, but has multiple other uses should you not be a movie buff, sports or TV fan,” says selling agent James Colbert, who got offers at the €320,000 AMV on his very first viewings this week.

Upstairs there’s a main en suite bedroom with a make-up room with ‘robes, bed two also has built-in and the third is currently used as a home office, bedecked with computer and work screens in this home that isn’t short of visual draws and distractions.

A permanent stairs leads to an converted 15’ by 12’ attic with Veluxes on both roof pitches, plus eaves storage.

VERDICT: Lights, camera and action.